Abstract [en]

A limited part of sport studies concerns itself with a limited part of sports, viz. the so-called extreme sports. One might expect these modern expressions of the need for physical activity and perilous adventures would generate more interest from sport sociologists and psychologist than is witnessed by the body of publications in the area. It’s reasonable to suggest that studies of phenomena outside the norm, beyond mainstream, is valuable not only for what is reveals of those phenomena, but just as much for what it tells us about the normal, the everyday life most of us live. An illustrative example of this is a new book by Victoria Robinson, established and productive sociologist in the field of gender studies at Sheffield University. The book, with the working title “A Different Kind of Hard: Everyday Masculinities, Identity and Rock Climbing”, was published by Berg Publishers in 2008 without the obvious innuendo as Everyday Masculinities and Extreme Sport: Male Identity and Rock Climbing. Robinsons book, reviewed here by Dr. Åke Nilsén, also a sociologist and researcher in the field of extreme sports, is a study of male climbers and the construction of their masculinity in relation to the everyday male identity. Our reviewer would have liked a macro level analysis, but he is on the whole very positive to Robinson’s effort.